Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 58 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:58

وَٱلَّذِينَ هُم بِـَٔايَـٰتِ رَبِّهِمْ يُؤْمِنُونَ

“And they who believe in the signs of their Lord”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who race to good say yes to every sign of their Lord, in the Book and in the world.

A reflection

Waymarks on a road

A delivery driver is new to the city. He follows the blue signs for the hospital: left at the roundabout, straight at the lights, right past the park. He never sees the building until the final turn. Each sign was enough to reach the next.

Āya, sign, carries an established picture in the lexicons. One traces the root to pausing and looking carefully. A poet says: stand at the ruined dwellings like a visitor, and pause, and look. The first hearers knew the āya of an old campsite: the hearthstones and ash left behind. And the Quran's āya is pictured as a waymark on a road. When one has passed, the next comes into view.

Commentators differ on which signs are meant here, and the difference only widens the picture. Two concise commentaries say the Quran. One commentator says the signs revealed and the signs set out in the horizons and in people's own selves. Another says both the cosmic signs and the legislative ones.

So the believers here are drivers who read the road. A sunrise is a sign. So is the love between spouses, a recovered illness, a line of the Book that lands in exactly the right week. None of them is the destination. Each points beyond itself.

The sign does not show you the hospital. It only shows you the next turn. That is enough, if you trust it.

The deniers earlier in the surah had wealth, sons, comfort. All of those were signs too. They read them as destinations. The believers read the same kind of things as waymarks.

A practical way to live this: pick one ordinary thing each day and ask what it points to. The rain on the window. The child asleep. The ayah you happened to hear. Pause, as the poet said, and look. Then take the next turn.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.